Before the name
Brewing in České Budějovice goes back to the city's founding in 1265, when Přemysl Otakar II granted the town brewing rights along with its land. By 1351 Charles IV had added the one-mile law, which kept foreign breweries and taverns out of a circle of about ten kilometres; later kings tightened it. For centuries the town's beer was called Budweiser Bier, beer from Budweis, and that is all the name meant.
The beer went to America from 1872, carried by emigrants and importers. In 1876 Anheuser-Busch began brewing its own Budweiser, and C. Conrad registered the trademark in 1878; Adolphus Busch later testified that the aim was beer of the same quality, colour and taste as the beer of Budweis. The Czech brewery that became Budvar was founded in 1895, when Czech-speaking burghers merged their rights into a joint-stock company.
The first batch, 200 hectolitres, was brewed on 7 October 1895 by Antonín Holeček. The company took the name Budvar in 1930, from Budějovice and pivo, and became a national enterprise in 1967. It is still owned by the state, which is unusual in the Czech beer industry and one reason the trademark fight has never been settled by a takeover.
The case
The two companies have been arguing since 1907, when they agreed that the Americans could use Budweiser in North America and the Bohemians in Europe. The agreement did not hold. There have been more than a hundred cases, in dozens of jurisdictions, with rulings that contradict each other because trademark law is national and the word means different things in different places.
The result is a map. In the United States and Canada, Budvar's beer is sold as Czechvar and the American beer is Budweiser. In most of Europe, Budvar sells as Budweiser Budvar and the American beer is sold as Bud. Elsewhere it depends on which registry got there first, and on whether a court accepted that a place name can be a brand.
The European Union protects Budějovické pivo as a geographical indication, which gives Budvar a lever that trademark law alone does not. AB InBev's answer was to buy the other brewery in town: Samson, the old Bürgerbräu, acquired in 2014, partly to strengthen its claim to a name that both companies insist is theirs. In České Budějovice the two breweries sit a kilometre apart, one state-owned and one belonging to the opposition.
The tour and the glass
The visitor centre is in Kněžské Dvory, two kilometres north of the square, and the tour runs 70 to 80 minutes with a maximum of thirty people. It covers the brewhouse, the lagering tanks and a tasting, and it leaves at fixed times: Czech at 14:00, German at 14:20, English at 14:40, with extra morning tours in July and August. Book, especially in summer.
The beer is 5.0% and 22 IBU, brewed from Moravian barley, whole-cone Saaz hops and the brewery's own yeast, and lagered for around ninety days. The tank version at the end of the tour is unfiltered; the bottled beer is filtered and pasteurised so it can travel. Budvar Dark uses the same yeast with roasted malt, and Budvar 33 is the lighter draught for the middle of the day.
Budvarka, the brewery's restaurant, is the obvious place after the tour and does goulash, dumplings and roast pork. In town, Masné krámy has poured Budvar and nothing else since 1954, in a sixteenth-century meat market with copper tanks behind the bar. Between the two rooms you can eat and drink the whole afternoon without leaving the orbit of the brewery.